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Seems like it would be interesting. In my experience, it's harder than it sounds. Not everybody has the temperament to just go in and dogpile. People tend to hesitate instead of coordinating their actions, especially if the person in the middle is pretty active. Of course this is what we exploit when practicing multiple uke randori.

I can think of scenarios where you and a properly trained friend would find it beneficial to the cause of peace to have trained in this sort of thing. Better than having to subdue someone without aiki options, I would guess.

I guess you could actually view this as simply training from uke's side of the randori situation.

I remember reading a story posted by someone on the Close Quarter Combat forum at E-Budo.com, regarding training for teams to go into prison cells and subdue and remove extremely recalcitrant prisoners, often to prevent them from hurting themselves or others. He relates that he went into a cell one night with his team to subdue a hysterical prisoner, all of the team in full riot gear with helmets and visors. At one point, he says, clearly visible in the video taken of the situation is himself, attempting to subdue the subject's arm, while he is being headlocked by one of his own team, helmet and all (!); a nice illustration of the effects of stress and adrenalin!

Our dojo went through a period of having a short Randori sesion at the end of the lesson (multiple attack). However, as the numbers of students increased I found this difficult to do time-wise. I tried two solutions:

1. small randori groups

2. multiple nages

Neither worked and tended to result in ukes and nages crashing into each other all over the place. I think the big problem is nages want to throw the ukes into the same area, and therefore there is a real chance of serious injury.

I've often wondered how easy it is to actually protect someone with aikido? Maybe we could try this in the dojo with one neutral party who can be grabbed/pinned in anyway but is not allowed to fight back, and a Nage who's job it is to release them, and who can also be attacked. (may be a bit unrealistic without the use of strikes/chokes).

I haven't tried multiple nage randori but I imagine it to be strictly for advanced students only. Most of the randori accidents I've seen or near misses were mostly caused by collisions between the ukes. Having more than one nage throwing attackers will make it difficult for the ukes to track and check their fall if they happen to be tossed at the wrong time and toward the wrong spot on the mat. And you have to remember that the safety of the ukes will rely on the nages; both nages have to coordinate their throwing and other waza to avoid hurting their ukes (of course in a real fight both nages have to coordinate to throw their attackers towards each other).

It would be challenging to say the least. Doable but definitely more risky.

I haven't tried multiple nage randori but I imagine it to be strictly for advanced students only. Most of the randori accidents I've seen or near misses were mostly caused by collisions between the ukes. Having more than one nage throwing attackers will make it difficult for the ukes to track and check their fall if they happen to be tossed at the wrong time and toward the wrong spot on the mat. And you have to remember that the safety of the ukes will rely on the nages; both nages have to coordinate their throwing and other waza to avoid hurting their ukes (of course in a real fight both nages have to coordinate to throw their attackers towards each other).

It would be challenging to say the least. Doable but definitely more risky.

Er, I didn't mean both would be multiple. I can see how that would be quite crazy (like one of those crazy huge melee kungfu movies, bodies flying around everywhere!).

No, I was imagining multiple nage (say 2 or 3) and 1 uke.

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking that it would be exactly equivalent to training the other side of the "normal" non-Shodokan type Aikido randori. That is, training the ukes to really work together to up the pressure on nage.

Interesting article recently by Todd Jones at Aikido Journal where he advocates increased training of the uke side of the aikido equation. I'm tending to agree more and more.

What would be cool is if you somehow limited each nage. Let's say you have 2 nage and 3 uke. Then, let the naga use only they're right arms, for instance. They would be then more inclined to keep the other nage on their left flank to cover the side that is unusable. That would make for some serious awareness practice, not to mention teamwork!

Might not be as useful as it sounds, but I think it would definitely be fun!